Rethinking Lyric Communities

From the circulation of poetic forms across different languages and traditions around the globe, through the envisioning of national and transnational discursive communities, to the use of poetry in contemporary episodes of political resistance and its dissemination on social media, lyric poetry seems to be a privileged site for an inquiry into community formation and its politics. Various theoretical approaches cast poetry in this peculiar role, from French and French-oriented political philosophy, (exemplified in the famous exchange between Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy begun in the 1980s), to the reevaluations — in reader-response criticism as well as in postcolonial and decolonial studies — of poetry’s roots in orality and performance. This workshop aims to bring the investigation of historical poetic communities into dialogue with recent developments in the theory of the lyric and in theories of community. While discussing a variety of poetic phenomena in modern European poetry that have been at the center of the critical debate — the poetics of the fragment, the unworking or désœuvrement of the work, the obscurity or polysemy of language, a change of aesthetic regime —, the workshop will also explore the lyric, in its longer history and transnational features, as a particular discursive mode that may offer alternative models of community formation. This symposium consists of three parts: an Oxford session at the Christ Church Research Centre, on 23 June 2022, a Berlin session at the ICI Berlin, on 5 July, and a poetry event, also on 5 July, at the ICI Berlin with Vahni Anthony Capildeo, Christian Hawkey, and Daniel Tiffany, who will read a selection of their poetry and offer their reflections on poetry, community and translation.Rethinking Lyric Communities, symposium, ICI Berlin, 5 July 2022 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e220705

The meningococcal vaccine antigen GNA2091 is an analogue of YraP and plays key roles in outer membrane stability and virulence

K.L.S. was supported by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) C. J. Martin Fellowship and Career Development Fellowship. A.F.H. was supported by a Marie Curie Fellowship (PIEF-GA-2012-328377). F.O., L.F., and S.B. were recipients of Novartis fellowships from the Ph.D. program of the University of Siena (Siena, Italy) and University of Bologna (Bologna, Italy), respectively.GNA2091 is one of the components of the 4-component meningococcal serogroup B vaccine (4CMenB) vaccine and is highly conserved in all meningococcal strains. However, its functional role has not been fully characterized. Here we show that nmb2091 is part of an operon and is cotranscribed with the nmb2089, nmb2090, and nmb2092 adjacent genes, and a similar but reduced operon arrangement is conserved in many other gram-negative bacteria. Deletion of the nmb2091 gene causes an aggregative phenotype with a mild defect in cell separation; differences in the outer membrane composition and phospholipid profile, in particular in the phosphoethanolamine levels; an increased level of outer membrane vesicles; and deregulation of the zinc-responsive genes such as znuD. Finally, the Δ2091 strain is attenuated with respect to the wild-type strain in competitive index experiments in the infant rat model of meningococcal infection. Altogether these data suggest that GNA2091 plays important roles in outer membrane architecture, biogenesis, homeostasis, and in meningococcal survival in vivo, and amodel for its role is discussed. These findings highlight the importance of GNA2091 as a vaccine component.PostprintPeer reviewe

Reading tea leaves worldwide: decoupled drivers of initial litter decomposition mass‐loss rate and stabilization

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large‐scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass‐loss rates and stabilization factors of plant‐derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). The stabilization factor quantifies the degree to which easy‐to‐degrade components accumulate during early‐stage decomposition (e.g. by environmental limitations). However, agriculture and an interaction between moisture and temperature led to a decoupling between initial mass‐loss rates and stabilization, notably in colder locations. Using TBI improved mass‐loss estimates of natural litter compared to models that ignored stabilization. Ignoring the transformation of dead plant material to more recalcitrant substances during early‐stage decomposition, and the environmental control of this transformation, could overestimate carbon losses during early decomposition in carbon cycle models

Identification and characterization of the sRNA network in Neisseria meningitidis

Bacterial small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) are posttranscriptional regulators involved in stress responses. These short non-coding transcripts are synthesised in response to a signal, and control gene expression of their regulons by modulating the translation or stability of the target mRNAs, often in concert with the RNA chaperone Hfq. Characterization of a Hfq knock out mutant in Neisseria meningitidis revealed that it has a pleiotropic phenotype, suggesting a major role for Hfq in adaptation to stresses and virulence and the presence of Hfq-dependent sRNA activity. Global gene expression analysis of regulated transcripts in the Hfq mutant revealed the presence of a regulated sRNA, incorrectly annotated as an open reading frame, which we renamed AniS. The synthesis of this novel sRNA is anaerobically induced through activation of its promoter by the FNR global regulator and through global gene expression analyses we identified at least two predicted mRNA targets of AniS. We also performed a detailed molecular analysis of the action of the sRNA NrrF,. We demonstrated that NrrF regulates succinate dehydrogenase by forming a duplex with a region of complementarity within the sdhDA region of the succinate dehydrogenase transcript, and Hfq enhances the binding of this sRNA to the identified target in the sdhCDAB mRNA; this is likely to result in rapid turnover of the transcript in vivo. In addition, in order to globally investigate other possible sRNAs of N. meningitdis we Deep-sequenced the transcriptome of this bacterium under both standard in vitro and iron-depleted conditions. This analysis revealed genes that were actively transcribed under the two conditions. We focused our attention on the transcribed non-coding regions of the genome and, along with 5’ and 3’ untranslated regions, 19 novel candidate sRNAs were identified. Further studies will be focused on the identification of the regulatory networks of these sRNAs, and their targets

Poetry, Community, Translation

Poetry can unite and estrange us. In this event, poets and translators Vahni Anthony Capildeo, Christian Hawkey and Daniel Tiffany, will read a selection of their poetry and offer their reflections on the proximity and alienation of other people&#8217;s voices or even one&#8217;s own; on the sense of never quite being at home in language; and on the potential of poetry to open up not only habitable and shareable spaces but also haunted and unbridgeable distances. Vahni (Anthony Ezekiel) Capildeo FRSL is Writer in Residence and Professor at the University of York, an Honorary Student of Christ Church, Oxford, and Charles Causley Trust Poet in Residence (2022). A Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction, Capildeo’s interests include traditional masquerade, silence, plurilingualism, and the poetics of place. The most recent of their eight books and nine pamphlets are Like a Tree, Walking (2021), which was a Poetry Book Society choice, and Gentle Housework of the Sacrifice(forthcoming). Capildeo is a contributing editor at PN Reviewand a contributing adviser for Blackbox Manifold. Current research (also facilitated by Pembroke College, Cambridge, 2021) centres on silence. Christian Hawkey has written several full-length poetry collections: The Book of Funnels, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Citizen Of (Wave Books), and most recently: Sift (2021). He’s published numerous chapbooks, as well as the widely reviewed and celebrated cross-genre book Ventrakl (2010). A collaborative bi-lingual erasure made with the German poet Uljana Wolf, Sonne from Ort (2013). A selection of Ilse Aichinger’s short prose, Bad Words, translated with Uljana Wolf, appeared in 2019 (Seagull Books). His own work has been translated into over a dozen languages. He is currently at work on a co-translation (with Marouane Zakhir) of two books by the Moroccan philosopher Abdessalam Benabdelali. Daniel Tiffany is the author of six collections of poetry, published variously by Wesleyan, Omnidawn, Noemi, and Action Books. In addition, five volumes of his literary criticism, including Toy Medium (2000) and Infidel Poetics (2009), have appeared over the last two decades, from presses such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago. His translations from French, Greek, and Italian have appeared in various journals, and he is a recipient of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, as well as the author of the entry on ‘Lyric Poetry’ in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory.‘Poetry, Community, Translation’, discussion, staged reading presented at the symposium Rethinking Lyric Communities, ICI Berlin, 5 July 2022 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e220705-1

Antibody-mediated immunity induced by engineered Escherichia coli OMVs carrying heterologous antigens in their lumen

Background: Outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) from Gram-negative bacteria are gaining increasing attention as vaccine platform for their built-in adjuvanticity and for their potential use as carriers of heterologous antigens. These 2 properties offer the opportunity to make highly effective, easy to produce multi-valent vaccines. OMVs can be loaded with foreign antigens by targeting protein expression either to the outer membrane or to the periplasm of the OMV-producing strain. Periplasmic expression is simple and relatively efficient but leads to the accumulation of recombinant antigens in the lumen of OMVs and the ability of OMVs carrying internalized antigens to induce antigen-specific antibody responses has been only marginally investigated and is considered to be sub-optimal. Methods: We have systematically analyzed in qualitative and quantitative terms antibody responses induced by OMVs carrying different heterologous antigens in their lumen. Group A Streptococcus (GAS) Slo, SpyCEP, Spy0269 and Group B Streptococcus (GBS) SAM_1372 were fused to the OmpA leader sequence for secretion and expressed in Escherichia coli. OMVs from the recombinant strains were purified and tested for immunogenicity and protective activity. Results: All proteins were incorporated into the OMVs lumen in their native conformation. Upon mice immunization, OMVs induced high functional antibody titers against the recombinant proteins. Furthermore, immunization with Slo-OMVs and SpyCEP-OMVs protected mice against GAS lethal challenge. Conclusions: The efficiency of antigen delivery to the vesicular lumen via periplasmic expression, and the surprisingly high immunogenicity and protective activity of OMVs carrying internalized recombinant antigens further strengthens the potential of OMVs as vaccine platform

The Hfq-Dependent Small Noncoding RNA NrrF Directly Mediates Fur-Dependent Positive Regulation of Succinate Dehydrogenase in Neisseria meningitidis▿

Previous microarray studies have suggested that an indirect mechanism of Fur regulation may be present in meningococcus at the posttranscriptional level through a small regulatory RNA (sRNA) system analogous to that of Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Recently, a Fur-regulated sRNA, NrrF, was identified that is involved in the iron regulation of the sdhA and sdhC succinate dehydrogenase genes. Here we report a detailed transcriptional analysis of the nrrF gene and show that NrrF is a Hfq-dependent sRNA. The Hfq protein mediates nrrF downregulation and Fur-dependent upregulation of the sdhCDAB operon, the major in vivo NrrF-regulated operon. NrrF forms a duplex in vitro with a region of complementarity overlapping the sdhDA mRNA junction. Furthermore, Hfq binds to NrrF in vitro and considerably enhances the efficiency of the interaction of the sRNA with the identified target. Our data suggest that Hfq-meditated binding of NrrF to the in vivo target in the sdhCDAB mRNA may cause the rapid degradation of the transcript, resulting in Fur-dependent positive regulation of succinate dehydrogenase. In addition, while the upregulation of sodB and fumB by Fur is dependent on the Hfq protein, it is unaffected in the nrrF knockout, which suggests that there is more than one sRNA regulator involved in iron homeostasis in meningococcus